Inspired with Nika Lawrie

Using Your Connection To Nature and The Ayurveda Cycle To Heal Your Body with Hannah Levin

• Nika Lawrie, Hanna Levin • Season 2022 • Episode 22

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Hannah Levin is an Ayurveda Health Counselor, Yoga Teacher, and Yoga Health Coach who also holds a Master's Degree in Education. Her own healing journey through chronic allergies, anxiety, sleep struggles, digestive issues, and chronic hip pain led her to healing found in Yoga and Ayurveda… and she now helps others do the same. 

Mentioned In The Show:
Ayurvedic Dosha Quiz: https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/6109a2d877fed80017d15b44 

Connect With Hannah: 

  • http://www.heartfeltwellbeing.com
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/heartfelthannah
  • https://www.instagram.com/heartfeltwellbeing/
  • https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmuFFBOlOAqgAb9--DrDvBA
  • https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTH75yIz3jRKZ4_c9Dj1UyA 

CONNECT WITH NIKA: https://mtr.bio/nika-lawrie

SUBMIT A QUESTION OR REQUEST A TOPIC:
I would love to hear from you! Please record your question or topic request to be featured in a future episode: https://www.speakpipe.com/NikaLawrie

DISCLAIMER:
*This podcast and its contents are for informational purposes only and are not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or a qualified health provider for any questions concerning a medical condition or health objectives. Additionally, the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual and are not guaranteed for business, personal, or wellness success. Use discretion and seek professional counsel when necessary.

AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER:
*Some of the resources and advertisements shared throughout the podcast episodes may contain affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a commission.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Inspired with Nika Laurie podcast. Hannah, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here. Thanks, I'm really honored to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so, as we kind of jump into it, can you tell me just a little bit about your background, what you do, and then, for those who aren't familiar with it, can you explain a little bit about Ayurveda and maybe even a little bit about yoga, since that's a big part of your life as well? Yeah, okay, we could. This could take hours, but a lot to get into, but just the general overview maybe. Yeah, yeah, so my name is Hannah Levin.

Speaker 1:

I live in Southwestern rural Virginia and I practice Ayurveda and teach yoga. I came to both of these healing paths through my own struggles with health, like many of us do, and so have a passion in like, oh my gosh, this gave me a real lease on new lease on life, and share it with other people. So I originally became a yoga teacher. Most people are familiar with what yoga is in the sense of it being a physical practice. What a lot of people don't recognize is that there's eight limbs of yoga practice. What a lot of people don't recognize is that there's eight limbs of yoga, and the actual asana, the physical practice, is just one of them. So I started teaching yoga professionally in 2010. And then Ayurveda is the sister science to yoga. So what I was experiencing was a lot of yoga students were coming to me and saying, oh, I have this issue, or like my digestion's not working so well or I can't sleep. Do you have any ideas? So they saw me as a yoga teacher, as somebody who was really healthy and knew a lot of things, and what I realized is I needed to learn more. And at the same time, I was having very similar struggles and I don't know if you or some of your listeners might recognize this that often what we're struggling with is mirrored to us by people in our lives. So they're coming to you being like what do you do about this? And you're thinking inside well, I don't really know how to deal with this in my own life. And so I realized I wanted to get some more education, because my health was not so great either. I was dealing with chronic sinus infections from horrible seasonal allergies, and that led to lots of antibiotic use, which disrupted my gut. Everything else, yeah. Then the things, all the things the anxiety, the depression, the weight gain, the you know digestive issues, the insomnia, all of it. So, um, in 2015, I went to school for Ayurveda.

Speaker 1:

So Ayurveda the name kind of tells you what it is if you know Sanskrit, so I'll break it down for you. So Ayur means life and Veda means knowledge or wisdom. So Ayurveda is the wisdom of life, or the knowledge of life, and I like to call it the secret of life. It's like what we're all looking for is like how do we live our lives in these bodies and minds and spirits that we've been gifted for this journey, and so Ayurveda really puts that into perspective. And I'll pause there. Do you want me to go into more specifics about Ayurveda? Yeah, maybe, if you can talk about the doshas and kind of how may we flow kind of through them and kind of how that changes, not only like how we're feeling, but also kind of through them and kind of how that changes, not only like how we're feeling, but also kind of throughout the daily routine, if that makes sense. Yes, absolutely, and that's what I teach a lot about, awesome.

Speaker 1:

So Ayurveda originated in India, like yoga did, over 5,000 years ago, and it it's really the sister science to yoga and that yoga was the spiritual path and Ayurveda is the rest of the time path. Basically, it's like what you're eating when you're doing certain things, and as well as herbal medicine. So I really focus on the in my practice, focusing on diet, lifestyle and herbal medicine. And Ayurveda is a five-element system, like Chinese medicine, but different elements than Chinese medicine, and so those elements in Ayurveda are space, air, fire, water and earth, and so all of those elements are in everything from a weather pattern to food, to a life stage, to your body physicality, to your mental pattern. So we look at these elements from the standpoint of what we call dosha, and dosha literally means energy, or sometimes it's translated as fault. Dosha literally means energy, or sometimes it's translated as fault. It's like kind of the crack where things get in, and dosha is.

Speaker 1:

When we look at the, there's three doshas, so there's five elements, and then Ayurveda further simplifies things by putting everything into these three doshas, and each dosha is made up of two of the elements. So the doshas are vada, pitta and kapha, and vada is made up of space and air, pitta is made up of fire and water and kapha is made up of earth and water. So a lot of times, people want to know what is my dosha Right, and I actually have a dosha quiz on my website If people want to go check it out. And what's interesting, though, is that we need to keep in mind that we are all made up of all the doshas all three doshas, but just in differing amount, and so we each have our own unique recipe. That makes us individually who we are, and we can't say, oh, I'm just Vata because we have other. We have the other doshas there too, so I like to teach people to say, like I'm Vata predominant, or I'm Pitta predominant, kapha predominant, so that we honor that. All of these elements are functioning in each of us.

Speaker 1:

So Ayurveda works with understanding that we have an individual constitution, but then we also are influenced by nature, and we are meant to live in rhythm with the natural world, and this is where we in Western society have gotten so off track, and it's causing a lot of disease, and so I often teach about. Our natural state is to be in a state of ease, to be walking the path of ease. When we know our constitutions, when we know how to live in alignment with nature, we're in ease, but what happens is we get off the path of ease unknowingly. Often we're doing things that we've been told we should do, or we think it doesn't matter, you know, and so we build up imbalance. And we can have imbalance in any of the doshas, but it's usually we go out of balance in our predominant dosha, and so when we're out of balance with nature, then we experience dis ease, which is what we get diagnosed with, yeah, disease, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So the beauty of Ayurveda is that when you learn it, you learn how to be a self healer, so that you begin to see where you get out of balance and you know how to bring yourself back into balance, right. So the seasons are also governed by dosha and so, like now, we're in winter season and the beginning of winter is governed by vada, so it's dry and cold, and then the second part of winter is wet and cold, and that's more kapha, that like earth if you think about water and earth mixing, which are the elements of kapha, you get mud right, and that's more that late winter, springtime, and so we need to learn to understand, and then summertime, of course, is pitta, that fire, yeah. So when we can understand what the elements around us are doing and that we balance with the wisdom of opposite. So, if it's cold out, we want to eat warm food, we want to stay warm, we want to do warming exercise. When it's hot out, we want to do cooling things, we want to swim in cool water, we want to exercise. During the coolest parts of the day, we want to eat cooling foods, and so this is very simplified.

Speaker 1:

Where it gets challenging is when people have imbalance, right when you've been diagnosed, maybe with autoimmune disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, whatever it is, and then it's like well, how do I get that back into balance? And so, learning your constitution and learning how to live in rhythm with the seasons, as well as the night and day. So you mentioned that of understanding, and this is really like the modern study of chronobiology or circadian rhythms. Ayurveda has known this for over 5,000 years. We're diurnal creatures, we're not nocturnal. We're not meant to stay up till all hours of the night with our electric lights burning bright, coaxing us into believing it's daytime, or our cell phones that are phased in with the blue light before bed. Exactly, exactly, yeah. So we may be incredibly technologically advanced, but we are still animals, like we still need to understand these rhythms and so, yeah, I mean, a lot of the work that I do with people is about adjusting when they're doing what, when they're eating, when they're sleeping, when they're exercising. Yeah, all of those, all of those pieces are so important.

Speaker 1:

So we, we go by a doshik clock, so there's different doshik energies that govern each part of the day, and when we align with that again we find a lot more ease. Right, can you review kind of what the clock is? I don't know specifically, but I know there's hours of the day where it changes kind of with the dosha. Can you kind of elaborate on that? Yeah, absolutely yeah. So there's four hour sections of the day and so we go through each dosha twice in a 24 hour period. So I'll just walk you through a day and say some things about each section.

Speaker 1:

So Vada governs early, well, from two to six am and pm. So if we're looking at waking up in the morning, we want to wake up by the end of Vata time, so that you want to wake up before 6am, correct, okay, yes, yeah, so the idea here is really you want to wake up before the sunrise, and this gets a little challenging, I mean, and unrealistic if you're living in an extreme climate, right, if you're way far away from the equator, then just go by the numbers, right? If you're living in, right. So, like where I live in Virginia, I go more by when the sunrise is, so I want to make sure that I'm getting up in the darkness before the sunrise. So this time of year I'm waking up at like 5 45. In the summertime I'm waking up at 5 AM, okay. So there's a little variation there, but so you could think I just want to be up before the sunrise, but you could also just be like 6 AM, right, that can be like a general goal for most people living in a temperate climate.

Speaker 1:

So we want to wake up before the sun because we want to have our energy build with the solar energy and this is super powerful. That time when it's dark is so that vata time. Those elements of air and space, they're very light, and what do we know from every spiritual tradition in the world is that early morning you do what you meditate or you pray yeah, you connect with something bigger, right, some energy bigger than yourself. So in that early morning time is the time to sit, okay. So those elements of air and space are like if you're running around, if you wake up and you already feel behind in your day, you're creating your own overwhelm and anxiety. Your nervous system is getting wound up. If you can wake up in the stillness and the quiet maybe your kids are still asleep Hallelujah, and you can sit for even one minute. It can be tiny, can be tiny and close your eyes and feel your awareness of being grounded within a connectivity to a greater whole. It's so powerful and then you see the day dawn. You're aware of that solar energy coming in and that gifts to you energy for your day. It's very powerful.

Speaker 1:

This is one of the biggest treatment, or most amazing treatment for depression Absolutely makes sense. Yeah, yeah, to be up and witness the dawn of the day, the sunrise. Okay, I could talk for hours. No, no, no, you're totally fine, keep going because it's fascinating. Yeah, okay, so that Vata time. We want to wake up before the sunrise. Energy builds with the sunrise.

Speaker 1:

At 6 am we switch into Kapha time, so between 6 and 10 a and PM, but we're just going to talk about AM. Right now is kapha. Now, remember kapha elements are earth and water. Okay, so this energy is very heavy and dense. So what is the thing to do is to exercise, right, so to move your body. So the sun's up, get moving, build some heat in your own body and then have a simple light meal, of course flowing with the seasons. So in the winter time it's going to be warm and a little more den, so we can get into food later if you want. And then kapha time is a great connective time. So it might be if you're working, it might be a great time to have meetings or to run errands, things like that.

Speaker 1:

And then we switch into pitta time. So pitta time is from 10 AM to 2 PM. So this is when the sun is at its height, right, solar energy, we know in the summertime. Don't go outside in the sun between 10 AM and 2 PM. That's when you'll get the bad burns. So this is when your digestive fire is the strongest. Our digestive strength follows the solar energy. This is also when you might have a lot of focus in your mental capacity, right?

Speaker 1:

So between 10 AM and 2 PM is when you want to eat your largest meal of the day, and if you eat animal protein, that's when you should have it, not in the morning, not in the evening, in the middle of the day when you can really make the best use of it, and then it's great during that fiery time to kind of chill out a little bit. So maybe in Ayurveda we have a practice of left side lying after we eat. So just five or 10 minutes after you eat, calmly, not in front of your computer, not while you're driving, not right. We want to take a lunch break, and this is so challenging for us in the West. It's so important to take a break. Forget how simple it could be, but how important. Yeah. Forget how simple it could be, but how important, yeah, yes, it's so important and it sets you up for success in every other way for the rest of your day. So, um, yeah, so taking some time to just like chill out, maybe do some left side lying for a few minutes, maybe go for a gentle walk and then get back to to focus.

Speaker 1:

Then we move into Vata time in the afternoon, so that's between two and 6 PM. Now this is a time that, again, if you're really busy, if you didn't eat enough lunch, you're going to feel scattered, overwhelmed, ungrounded and chaotic. You're going to feel scattered, overwhelmed, ungrounded and chaotic. If you've taken care of yourself prior in the day you will feel grounded. Those elements of air and space are again going to kind of sweep us up if we're not careful. So this is a good time to do more focus like studying or reading or writing work. To do more focus like studying or reading or writing work, that's not so um, you're not taking in so much additional information through your senses. This is also a good time to um have an earlier, lighter dinner.

Speaker 1:

So in my program, the vitality circle this is our we practice 10 habits of Ayurveda. Earlier or later dinner is the first of those 10 habits. I love that. I also tend not, I mean, it's really kind of bio-individual, but for the most part I tend to tell people to try to eat most of their meals between 10 am and 6 pm, if they're on a normal schedule, simply because you don't want to eat so close to bedtime. You want to give your body that time to really digest the food and start to move out some of those toxins and stuff too. So, absolutely so you get this. Yeah, so that's totally in alignment with Ayurveda.

Speaker 1:

Is an? An intermittent fasting is what Ayurveda has called rhythmic eating for a really long time? Yeah, that our bodies need to experience what we call sponda. There's an expansion of receiving nourishment and then there's a contraction of digesting it, assimilating it, moving it on through, and we want that full contraction before we receive more. And for most people during the day, that's between three and four hours in between meals. So that means no snacking, which is challenging for a lot of folks initially. And then it means in the evening, like, yeah, closing your kitchen six, six, 30, and then not having any food. You can have, you know, herbal tea or water or whatever, but not having any food again until your breakfast in the morning. And again, this does look a little bit and I like how you said it's bio, individual, you know what, how I would say it is that it's docently appropriate, right.

Speaker 1:

You look at each person and say what is it that that they specifically need to to be their happiest and healthiest self? Like we can have these general guidelines. And then there are the specifics what are they healing? What are the? You know, is this somebody who just gave birth? Well, they need a snack. Yeah, like that's okay. Yeah, postpartum, and you're nursing and you're recovering, right. So there's exceptions to everything for sure.

Speaker 1:

So when we're coming around, we want to have into that evening time. We want to have an earlier, lighter dinner and then we come into kapha time again. So it's in the evening, 6 to 10 pm. This is a great time again to move your body. It might be a great time to do some housework or yard work or jump with your kids on the trampoline or go for a bike ride around the neighborhood and then to wind down, turn off your electronics, get out of work mode, let it go for the day. Don't look at screen after 8 pm, if you can handle that and really tune into being present where you are and letting that heavier energy of kapha invite you into sleep. Because if you stay up past 10 PM, then pitta energy comes in and that fire lights back up. If you're still awake, that comes in as a second wind and that second wind ends up meaning that you eat again and that you start projects and you start amping your whole system back up. But what you're actually doing is stealing energy from tomorrow and what happens over and over and over again I'm sure you teach this too is that over time, this depletes your reserves.

Speaker 1:

This is where so much autoimmune diseases come from. Oh my gosh, your mitochondria just end up starting to fizzle and that's really the powerhouse of the body. And once they're out of whack, it's really really difficult to kind of get them back to full functioning. And not only does that make you feel like crap and it makes you have less energy and you feel burnt out, but it also ages you internally too. And so if you you know if feeling good isn't a good enough reason to start changing that, maybe you know the more superficial thing of you're going to get older and look older from it too might be an excuse too. But yes, yeah, absolutely Absolutely yeah. And so the the way that we we talk about it is that we want the cellular fire to ignite when we're asleep, because then that's like the janitors coming in and taking out the trash from all your cells. That's when the healing happens, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And so go to sleep before 10. Yeah, like as much as you can. And if you have kids, think about like you prioritize. I bet mamas, you prioritize putting your kids to bed at a good time, and that might be when you need to go to bed too. You know, it's funny because I, my daughter, used to. Really she's six and she usually goes to sleep around seven, 30 to eight.

Speaker 1:

Daughter, usually she's six and she usually goes to sleep around 7, 30 to 8, and what I find is that I feel the absolute best if I get in bed right after that, so usually like 8, 30, and then I just sort of, you know, maybe read, hang out, and I usually end up falling asleep by 9, 9, 30, and it's golden and it's like, but you have to make that decision to not turn on the news or not watch one of the late night shows or you know, just kind of give yourself that space and it's OK to do that. Yes, yeah, so powerful, and then it's no problem waking up in the morning and being awake and ready for the day and patient and present with your children. Yeah, yeah. So let me just finish. We're, we're almost done here. So in the, in the nighttime.

Speaker 1:

So, Pitta, we want to be asleep so that the body can heal, so that 10 PM to 2 AM time has been shown now by Western science to be the time when the body really does the healing work. When we're sleeping, and if we're depriving our bodies of that, then we're setting ourselves up for getting off the path of ease, right, we're setting ourselves up for disease. So then we come into 2 AM to 6 AM, we're back to Vata time. So I talked about the later part of it is when we want to wake up. If we are, um, if our nervous systems are overstimulated, we're going to find that we wake up during that early morning time, so kind of like between two and four maybe.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people tend to wake up and sometimes your mind starts going. Sometimes you need to pee, so if that is the movement too, so you might need to run to the bathroom, but then often people's minds start going and this is a real indication that your nervous system isn't truly at rest and you start thinking the grocery list or some big problem you're trying to solve, and it can all seem way worse at three o'clock in the morning than at 8am after you've exercised and having some breakfast. I love that you say that, because that actually really registered with me before, so years ago, when I too was not feeling well and sick, and before I kind of went on my own healing journey and now help others do it too. One of the things that always stood out to me, which I couldn't explain I was really weird was that I felt and I know this sounds weird, but I felt like my dreams were keeping me awake, and it was. My dreams were so vivid and so intense, not necessarily like a, a nightmare or something. They were just really vivid and I was so in them that I never fully got that deep rest that I needed. I was kind of always anxious and, moving through the dream, that I felt exhausted in the morning when I woke up, even if I got that full eight hours, and what I ended up finding was that my hormonal levels were all screwed up, my cortisol was screwed up, and so it was spiking at different times. All screwed up, my cortisol was screwed up, and so it was spiking at different times. And what that was was the um, I was healing from trauma I'd been through and recovering, um, you know, and healing my body, and so it's interesting.

Speaker 1:

It may not be that you know you have to get up and pee or that you're thinking about the grocery list. It can also be that you're just not, uh, getting into that deep sleep, that you really need to rest and recover. Yeah, yeah, and you make a really good point about like we have to process so. So in Ayurveda we talk about and you had mentioned, like the seed of our health is really in the gut, and that's really the premise that Ayurveda is built on too. And we have these two concepts of Agni and Ama, and Agni is the digestive fire and Ama is the toxin. And we look at those things in the gut a lot, but we also can look at them in the mind, that there's Agni and Ama in the mind. So the Ama is like when we look at it in the gut, we call it undigested food stuff. It's like the gunk that kind of hangs out in there, right, but we also have a gunk that hangs out in our minds and in our emotional realm of things that we haven't fully processed or digested in in our lives.

Speaker 1:

And this is trauma. And there's a lot of great research happening right now about understanding that we all have trauma. It's not that some people do and some people don't. Everybody does, yeah, everybody does. And it's really part of the healing process and it's something that I teach about in my programs is we work with mindset and we also work a lot with recognizing where are the places that we tend to just trip ourselves up, or, you know, our. Or, as you mentioned, like your system was trying. It's like sweet system, it's just trying to process through all of this, right, and your hormones get out of whack, right, and we just keep being like get back in the box, you know, body, mind and spirit. Right, like, why are you messing up? I expect more of you, yeah, right, yeah, and.

Speaker 1:

And when we can step back and like see that we are these whole beings and we've all experienced trauma and that we're all healing in the unique and amazing ways that we are, then we can bring in a lot of empathy. It's like, oh, yes, and let's show up for this, this larger conversation of not just like I have to look this way and act this way and have these accolades and achieve all these things. It's like, okay, there's gotta be a little space and time for digesting it all. Right, absolutely. So along those lines, you know we've covered a lot of information here that I think is profoundly important. I mean, I think it's. It's truly life-changing once you start to kind of incorporate these things.

Speaker 1:

But for someone who's just getting started, how do we start to align ourselves, kind of the dosha and our align ourselves with nature itself? You know what are, what are some simple steps that we might start doing to kind of the dosha and our align ourselves with nature itself. You know what are. What are some simple steps that we might start doing to kind of incorporate this into our daily. Yeah, that's a really great question, and I was just going to say I want to give a caveat to everything I just said, which is that so I just said, like this is, this is what you should do, right, but what I, what I want to say is that all of these things are best done gradually and usually one at a time. So, just if something stood out to you from what I just shared in the dosha clock like, really hone in on that and try doing it one day a week, you know, and just seeing and I tell all of my clients, you know, don't just take my word for it or feel like I'm telling you you have to do this try it and see how you feel and let that be what inspires you to keep doing it. Yeah, absolutely so. So, yes, what is a simple, gentle way to to start practicing?

Speaker 1:

So I I often ask people to start with food, because that's what people tend to be most interested in initially, and I like to point out that Ayurveda is not a diet, so it's not like eating paleo or, you know, macrobiotic or you know whatever it. It's eating in a way that is best for you and and here's what everybody can start right now eating in season. So this is one of the best ways for folks to start tuning into what is happening in the natural world around you. What is growing, you know? Or if we're in the winter time and there aren't fresh foods growing, what are the foods that are available that keep through the winter winter squashes, root vegetables. There are leafy greens that grow in the winter collards, kale, chard, things like that, yeah, beans, right. So these are great things to look at.

Speaker 1:

Grain you know winter is the season to eat grain, not so much spring or summer, right, and I'm kind of lumping fall into to winter when I say that and I remember that tree season, yeah, yeah. So back to this one little invitation it's like start eating seasonally, start paying attention to, you know, what's available in if you have a farmer's market that goes through the winter, or even if it comes back in the springtime what's available, what's being grown where you are, what can you grow in your own garden, and really tuning into that and what's available in the wild as well. You know, the the wild plants are really here as as medicine and notice what is showing up. You know, in the springtime, things like chickweed and nettles are really great.

Speaker 1:

Nettles is one of the best allergy medications you could ever take and chickweed is a great. It's a liver cleanser, you know, and it's easy to make chickweed pesto or throw it in a stir fry or, you know, have it with your rice and beans or whatever. And yeah, so Anything that's going to help clear out and protect your liver is super important as well. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so anything that's going to help clear out and protect your liver is super, super important as well. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I will say, like you know, going through the holidays is very liver congesting. Yes, and just knowing this very simple tool is that bitter clears out the liver, not alcoholic bitters. If you're having bitter, so bitter green, so that's any of your leafy green, right? So so thinking about getting bitter into your diet every day, especially as we go into the springtime, is very, very helpful, absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So it's amazing and it's it's interesting because you know, if you, if you start to just listen to your body, even if you don't know about, you know, the ierratic practice. If you don't, if you're not versed in all this, you can you kind of just start listening to your body and your body will tell you it really does line up with what the teachings are. I mean, you know, we naturally start to crave. You know, think about Thanksgiving food right, it's the sweet potatoes and the root vegetables and stuff. And you think about in the spring, like we mentioned earlier, you start to want those cooler. You know the berries or the fruit or the, you know the lemon water kind of things, the cucumber water, those kinds of things tend to be much more lighter and you just really start to kind of crave those things.

Speaker 1:

And also, when you think about, you know, going back to just the individual day, when you think about your cycle throughout the day and how you feel it really does line up with, you know, the movement of the sun and what's going on through your day and your different levels of energy as well. And so I think just as simple as starting to really listen to your body can be game changing Absolutely. Into your body can be game changing Absolutely, and that is something that I really tried to help people know that they're getting to know themselves and then they can make the best decisions for themselves from a very comfortable, intuitive place. So it's not all these rules, it's not lists, it's really tuning into what do you need right now? Well, what's, what's the weather doing today? How'd you sleep last night? What's? You know what life stage are you in?

Speaker 1:

And you know, for women especially, we move through these life stages that are are very powerful for us, and it being in the motherhood time of life is can be very depleting if we don't get really nourished right after we give birth. And I work with a lot of women, um, kind of like thirties through seventies, a lot of post-menopausal women, and we're we see fallout that started when they were postpartum, right, yeah, and, and it continues. And so I I just want to say you know what you teach, what I teach. All of it is a way of living. It's not waiting until you're sick or you've been diagnosed with something. It's a lifestyle and it's a way to live so that you are able to age gracefully, fully enjoy your life, not end up with something that takes you out of the ball game that you want to be in.

Speaker 1:

So I just, I really encourage people to you know, practice some of these things and see, see how it feels for you and and then go from there. It can be a gentle process and that's really what it needs to be. So it's a, it's a self-loving. It's not a diet that you're like I can't have this or I can't you know, or an exercise regimen is like I have to do this. It's really coming to like what? What are you available for today? What's the tiniest little step you can take that moves you in the direction you want to go in? And that's, that's what gets you there.

Speaker 1:

And it's, it's, it's so powerful. I'm so honored to do this work and to and to practice it myself. Yeah, yeah, well, just the information you shared today has been phenomenal and I'm super grateful for it, and I just want to acknowledge you for the work that you are doing and for you know the you you shared with me before we started recording today about your, your Facebook group and being able to help all of those people and just how powerful all of that is, and so I commend you for the work that you're doing. Well, thank you Right back at you. So I do.

Speaker 1:

I do have a couple lightning round questions for you, but before we get to that, can you share, how can the listeners connect with you? Um, the Facebook group as well, and then, um, maybe the link for doing the dosha test as well, yeah, so, um, yeah, as you mentioned, I have a Facebook group that is called the heartfelt yoga and Ayurveda, and, um, yeah, we're almost at 2000 members right now, which is really exciting. So there's over 430 yoga classes there that are free and you can go check those out. And then I do a weekly live. I'll be interviewing you, and, and so sometimes those are me just teaching about Ayurveda, sometimes they're interviewing and inspiring people like yourself, and I do a seasonal challenge in there as well, so it's called the one habit to thrive. So you can learn a ton of Ayurveda just coming into that Facebook group. And then my business is called heartfelt wellbeing, and so my website is this heartfelt wellbeingcom, and as soon as you see that pop up, there's a little button that says take the quiz. You can take that. Yeah, awesome, and I'll, of course, link to all of that in the show notes, just to make it as great as possible. So, yeah, okay, are you? Are you ready for a lightning round? Okay, okay, I think I was ready, as I will be. There's not a whole lot of pressure, so don't don't worry.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so what is the most impactful book you've ever read and why? That's a really hard question, sorry. I've read many very impactful books, oh goodness. Well, how about? I just share? Right now I'm reading Breath by James Nestor, about, I just share. Right now I'm reading um breath by James Nestor, and um I, I'm loving how much what he's saying aligns with yoga and Ayurveda, and um, he's just a really good writer. So I'll just say what's on my nightstand right now? No, and that's totally fine. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

So the next question is what is your best tip for living a toxin free life? Trust your gut. That's a good one. Yeah, literally and figuratively, yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah, toxins can show up in so many ways, you know, in our food, in our environment, in our relationships, in our mental patterns, and so, yeah, I think, just really tuning into your own intuition, your integrity and your deeper knowing, definitely Okay. So the next question is what is your best tip for living an eco-friendly life? Get everything as local, organic and seasonal as you can. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, okay. And so the last and final question oh, can I add one thing to that? Sure, of course.

Speaker 1:

Um, I've been studying more and more about phthalates and this might be something that you talk about too, but this is what, how it shows that mostly is in artificial sense and these are gut disruptors. So if you use you know, you know Glade plugins or car fresh air, you can tell by my face. I'm like, put those things in your environment. Or even scented laundry detergent, oh my gosh, yes, mainstream brands like Tide and stuff like please, please, please, get those things out of your life, and especially for your hormones and your children's hormonal health. Yes, yes, get the phthalates out of your life, and especially for your hormones and your children's hormonal health. Yes, yes, the phthalates out of your house.

Speaker 1:

Speaking my language, I created an entire product line to get rid of yeah, to get rid of synthetic flavors and synthetic scents, because they are so damaging to the body and people don't realize, because it's not something that you, you know you won't notice it after one use, but if you're using it every day, all the time, it's messing with your endocrine system, it's messing with your hormones and it can cause whole ripple effect of issues and it's a huge deal. That's not just enough. So I love that. Yes, well, and thank you, I forgot that you do that. So, yes, that's fabulous, and thank you for developing that line, because the world needs it.

Speaker 1:

It's very important, it's. It's crazy how, how dangerous they all are and how they're in literally everything yeah, everything. It's. It's really hard to actually completely remove them from your life. Yeah, it's crazy. So, yeah, yeah, actually completely remove them from your life. Yeah, amazing. So, yeah, yeah, but do the best you can.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, now, when I'm around, I get a headache. Yeah, I'm just like yeah, there's my body. Our body is always talking to us. Yes, it is. We can choose to pay attention or not, and then it'll keep talking louder, right, yeah, so we pay attention, absolutely Okay.

Speaker 1:

So last question for you what does living consciously mean to you? I think it means being present and being willing to always learn. Love that, yeah, absolutely being open, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, none of us know everything. There's, there's always more to learn and every experience, every person, every moment in your life has something to teach you. And I think, yeah, I think that creates consciousness, absolutely. Well, there's Bill Nye. The science guy has a quote that I love, and he says that everyone you meet knows something that you don't, and there's always an opportunity to learn, and so be open to meeting everybody. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Good job, bill. Yeah, Right, awesome. Well, hannah, thank you so so much for being on the show. This has been absolutely fantastic and I'm very grateful for it. Thank you, my pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity, and I look forward to being in touch with your listeners, and may we all be happy and healthy as we move forward in this uncertain world. Yeah, definitely, thank you. Thank you.

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Nika Lawrie

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